The candidate filing period for this year’s presidential election will end on Friday, November 5. To be qualified to be on the IEC ballot boxes, candidates must satisfy certain legal requirements.
All the candidates including NPP’s President Adama Barrow and UDP’s ANM Ousainou Darboe said they are qualified. But what if the IEC announces on Saturday that they aren’t legally qualified to run for president?
A Gambian human rights group, Right To Know (R2K), recently wrote the IEC chairman querying the qualification of President Barrow and several others.
The group argued that independent candidates, Tamsir Jasseh, Joseph Joof and Papa Faal have not met the residency rule, which says that a candidate should be ordinarily resident in The Gambia for five years immediately preceding the election.
R2K Gambia also argued that the NPP blatantly violated the Election Amendment Act and shouldn’t be allowed to file a candidate for the December 4 election.
According to them, the president’s party never held a congress and does not have an elected executive committee.
But NPP’s deputy spokesman, Seedy Njie described R2K Gambia as “a stupid, ignorant and irresponsible anonymous political “ususu” group”, urging the public to ignore them.
The IEC chairman will announce on Saturday the candidates that are qualified to run for president on December 4, 2021.